So what do I need to know about BlueLightCamp Hackathon?

So, There are seven days left before BlueLightCamp unconference and hackathon and we are looking forward to seeing you in Manchester. You have registered haven’t you? http://blc13-eorg.eventbrite.com/ If you have you can get started hacking now.

If you are participating at both days of BlueLightCamp, then you should know that we are planning to allocate one of our rooms on Saturday to people wishing to work on their ideas for the hackathon. We will be there explaining what the hackathon is and able to talk 1-1 about the ideas you may have and how you might bring them to reality over the weekend. We will have flip charts and post-it notes for you to find skills needed and for people to arrange times to meet up. If you get yourself organised on Saturday you can be talking through your idea on Saturday evening and thinking it through. It is always amazing to me how ideas solidify after a nights sleep.

On Sunday we will have an introduction and team forming session, so you won’t miss out if you are just coming on Sunday. This hackathon is about meeting new people and working together so you have to be physically present on Sunday to enter your hack for judging.

Hackathons like this rely on people getting together to work on new ideas but it is easy to get carried away with what can be done in a day. It is best to pick something which can show the intent of what your idea is, and can be built to a demonstrable level before the deadline. Don’t try to boil the ocean. Try to make something nice and demonstrable.

Feel free to ask the people who are present from our sponsors about your ideas on Saturday and think about how you might implement them. There are lots of tools and services on the Internet to get things done or connect things together, so think outside the environment of your own computer.

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do something in particular. People will be able to help you assess feasibility, suggest alternatives and help you.

The important thing is to have something working and ready to demo by the end of the day. You can deal with wider issues (installers, security, different browsers, mobile OS etc etc etc) once you have proved your hack works. It will certainly help you if you have a development environment you are familiar with already set up on your own computer.